MISSION CREEP IN COLOMBIA

U.S. Should Think Twice About Taking On Insurgents

With about as much finesse as a county fair shell-game operator, the Bush administration last week took the occasion of Congress' summer recess to change the rationale for U.S. policy in Colombia. What had been an intervention targeted at drug traffickers was transformed into full-bore U.S. support for new Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's aggressive approach to that country's 38-year-old civil war.

The United States has provided some $1.7 billion in assistance to Colombian security forces since 1999, on the proposition that tighter government control of the country against the major rebel groups would lead to a reduction in the flow of narcotics from Colombia to the U.S. drug market. It hasn't worked. Exports of Colombian-origin drugs to the United States have increased during the period in question and the Colombian gangs have diversified from cocaine into heroin.

President Andres Pastrana, Mr. Uribe's predecessor, had taken the approach of trying to negotiate with the rebels, at one point even granting them unchallenged control of a substantial piece of the country. The talks went nowhere.

Two of the groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, call themselves Marxist-Leninists and say they favor land reform, in opposition to Colombia's rich landowners. The third group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, is financed by the landowners and has in the past been closely associated with the Colombian military. All three groups are basically drug- dealing thugs.

The Colombian people provided Mr. Uribe a strong electoral mandate in May to take a more aggressive approach to the rebellion. The new president quickly sought increased U.S. military assistance and a freer hand to use the aid that Colombia was receiving already in hunting rebels, as well as in continuing to try to suppress narcotic production and export.

Mr. Uribe sweetened the pot by promising to use $6 million of the U.S. aid to train special forces to protect the Cano Limon pipeline running from Colombia to the sea, operated by Occidental Petroleum. Not gun- shy, the rebels launched a mortar attack in the capital Bogota while Mr. Uribe was being inaugurated.

Mr. Uribe's efforts with the Bush administration have now paid off. The United States is more deeply engaged in an old war against rebels whose roots run even more deeply than those of the coca plants American and Colombian forces were formerly engaged in digging up. The Occidental pipeline -- important as it may be to the Colombians -- is of no strategic or tactical importance to the United States.

Last week Mr. Uribe declared a state of emergency, including measures restricting travel within the country, authorizing preventive detention and controlling television and radio broadcasting, citing national security as the basis for the need for the new powers he provided to the police and military.

The question for the United States is: Do we really want to be involved in this? We think the answer is no.